Felicia Horowitz

Founder of Horowitz Family Foundation

Felicia Horowitz’s roots started in Compton, California. Her childhood felt like the Huxtables—warm, loving and special. It gave Felicia great confidence and led to her becoming Senior Class President and Miss Congeniality in the Sugar Ray Robinson Pageant. But when she ventured outside of her Compton cocoon to attend a predominately white, wealthy, private university, that confidence vanished. The cultural difference created a thick barrier that not even her Ms. Congeniality crown could penetrate. Felicia felt alone and isolated—she was an outsider.

Since then, Felicia has dedicated her life’s work to the people who need the most: the outsiders. Through the American Jewish World Service, she has had opportunities to work with marginalized communities abroad. She works for the sex workers in Cambodia, the transgender community in Uganda, the people without water rights in Bolivia and the disenfranchised Haitians in The Dominican Republic.

Felicia works for the people who feel they are not good enough, the people who are excluded and the people without hope. “As long as I have breath in my lungs and a beat in my heart, you are not alone,” she says.